"Texas-based real estate expert Bob Gibbons notes in a blog post that State Farm’s Dallas office space lease--about 2.5 million square feet of workspace in a few different places--is the Dallas area’s largest-ever office space lease by a single company.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported this week, too, that State Farm leased several hundred thousand more square feet of office space in Atlanta.

The company has 3.6 million square feet of office space in southern Illinois and the spaces in Atlanta and Dallas easily total that amount.

At the end of 2010, in a special session, the Illinois Legislature passed a 67% hike in its corporate and personal income tax. The state is struggling with a structural deficit and its credit rating was recently lowered. The state now has the worst credit rating in the country. A number of businesses have floated the idea of leaving the state. A move by State Farm, however, would devastate the downstate economy."